


Turnabout

by Kahika



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, F/F, Gen, Hacking, Mission Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 17:55:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3618957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahika/pseuds/Kahika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While EDI's busy, Shepard does her own hacking on an assignment instead of having a squadmate do it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turnabout

**Author's Note:**

> Infiltrator femshep; Lair of the Shadow Broker completed, Ann Bryson rescued, mission part of Citadel DLC completed.

It's not an ideal situation.

They weren't exactly expecting computers on this assignment, so she'd brought James and Ashley. Which had been fine getting into the dig site, even as full of Cerberus forces as it was, but then it turned out they hadn't made it in time to save the Alliance scientists _or_ the artifacts they'd dug up, and the computer with the data on their finds was _damn_ well protected.

So of course Cerberus chooses this moment to chase the _Normandy_ with not one, not two, but _five_ gunships (" _Five_?!" Joker had screeched into her earpiece), taking up too many of EDI's processes with the defense system for Shepard to want to bother her about some encrypted data.

This requires a delicate touch, not Ashley's Alliance or even Spectre standard issue brute force programs, nor the way James stares at a console and kicks it a few times (she's still a little appalled that his percussive maintenance often _works_ ). And she's got one. She may not be as good as EDI, or even Tali or Kasumi, but she's an Infiltrator. She used to hack crates with her eyes shut.

(And then she died, and when she woke up, the world had realized anyone with some omnigel could get into their things anyway, and people apparently gave up and stopped locking their crates entirely. All her training, rendered nearly useless in only two years.)

Shepard looks between the Alliance console and the oncoming Cerberus troops, and makes a decision.

"Cover me."

She holsters her Widow and gets to work.

"Just rip it out of the terminal and let's go," James argues.

He lobs a grenade over his shoulder. Shepard barely hears the explosion: The commands racing across the computer's monitor are almost soothing. It's been so long since she had a fun challenge like this. Since getting a ship with a true AI, it's all been bypassing doors, which isn't a challenge at all, or yelling at diplomats, which is the aggravating kind of challenge.

She does dimly hear Ashley saying, "She just does this sometimes. It's easier to cover her than snap her out of it."

Working with people who know her this well is the best thing in the world. Shepard smiles, and tunes them out entirely, relishing the chance to rip through firewalls (not Alliance standard: someone here knew what they were doing) until James is yelling her name and to " _Move!_ "

Shepard gets in one more keystroke on her override and then an explosion throws her yards from the terminal, landing hard enough to hurt her even with her Heavy Skin Weave. She stumbles to her feet, letting her armor's underused medigel dispensers soothe the aches, and irritably hurls Incinerate in the direction the grenade had come from. Ashley's at her side almost immediately, providing cover fire as she helps her back to their position, but before Shepard can get back to work, Ashley puts a hand on her elbow.

"Commander. Cloak up, maybe?"

Shepard smirks. "Nice thinking, LC."

She cloaks, and settles back in at the keyboard. Once again, her world narrows to the glow of the two displays. There's a structure, an order to programming that Shepard hadn't realized she'd _missed_ in the wartime chaos. It's a language (a lot of languages, but she has her specialties) easier than that of diplomacy, a problem easier than an invasion, a battle of brains instead of who has the most thermal clips. If she had the time, she'd do this more often, but properly. Although her six months on house arrest had given her a little time to start catching up on the technological advancements made in the two years she was dead, she still feels behind.

Her reset packet goes through, and the ground shakes twice in quick succession. Possibly related, a timer starts flashing at the top of the monitor, and Shepard blinks. "Uh-oh."

"I don't like the sound of that," says James.

"Commander?" says Ashley, more like like she wants to tell her something else than like she's asking for clarification.

Shepard starts typing again. "Self destruct. Five minutes."

"Dios," says James.

"And we've got two Atlases and some engineers," Ashley says. That explains the two tremors and her tone. "You still wanna hold position?"

"If Cerberus wants this data so badly and the scientists put in a self destruct sequence to keep it out of their hands, it's gotta be valuable," says Shepard.

"Fine," says Ashley. "But I'm calling for an evac _now_ so we can clear an LZ as soon as you're ready."

"I should have called you Loca, not Lola," James says.

Shepard ignores Ashley as she calls Steve, but the response goes right into her earpiece. " _Belay that, Commander: Even if you clear the ground, it's too hot in the air right now!_ "

Ashley swears. "We'll try and clear things up a bit, but I want you here the _second_ you're able!"

"I don't want to turn around, do I," Shepard says rhetorically.

"Nah, Loca, you do your thing," says James. "The Commander and I've got this."

She's not so sure they've got this when a couple of minutes later, she hears complaints about thermal clips and grenade supplies, but they let her work for a few moments longer before interrupting her about it.

Ashley taps her shoulder. "Can I borrow your Widow? We're out of thermal clips, and it's too crowded to loot Cerberus."

"Should have brought that old Lancer from the Archives," Shepard murmurs, but she unclips both her Widow and her Carnifex from her armor with a glance at James which he doesn't notice.

Understanding immediately, Ashley unloads her pistol and passes the thermal clips to James before she starts using the Widow herself. "Like Vega can handle the cooldown system," she says between shots, and Shepard cackles as she writes a buffer overload.

"I could handle it!" James objects. "I just hated it."

Shepard chuckles, but glances at the clock. A minute and a half. No time for banter. She's willing to use the self destruct to take down a chunk of Cerberus if she has to, but she'd rather have the data. She refocuses, her fingers flying over the keyboard as she overrides commands almost as fast as they come up, and with twenty seconds to spare the timer blinks off and she suddenly finds herself staring at the root directory of those Alliance scientists' beautifully organized folders.

"Self destruct's off! I'm in!" she shouts, and she turns around.

Three Troopers are caught in a Singularity. Shepard grins, and it widens when she notices a turret firing on a couple of Guardians from the side before it gets abruptly explodes. Liara, Garrus, and Tali are shooting a path through to them, and a glance up reveals the shuttle, speeding away like it's just dropped the team off.

"Ash," Tali calls. "Catch."

She throws a small bag at Ashley, which glows blue after a moment, boosted by Liara's biotics to land right in her hands. Ashley rips it open.

"Thermal clips," she and James say together, gleeful, and they immediately reload. As Liara's squad joins them behind what's left of the science team's furniture, Garrus also dumps a case of grenades by them, getting an outright whoop of joy from James.

"Sorry we're late for the party," Garrus says, as casually as though they were in her apartment on the Strip instead of some backwater planet surrounded by Cerberus, and he picks up both her empty Carnifex and Ashley's abandoned Javelin to reload.

"It's okay," says Ashley with a smirk. "We saved you a few dances."

"Let me guess," says Liara. "Shepard's _insisting_ on getting some data even as chaos reigns around her."

"Does this happen a lot?" asks James.

"Apparently when I'm not around," says Tali, because she always let Tali do the hacking when they were groundside from the first _Normandy_.

Liara sighs. "I knew she'd need a rescue."

Steve's voice comes through on all their earpieces. " _When I belayed Commander Williams' evac order, T'soni flew over to commandeer the Kodiak herself!_ "

"That's not true," says Liara.

Tali shakes her head. "No, you definitely flew."

"Your feet left the ground," Garrus agrees. "The _Normandy_ hasn't seen a display of biotics like that since the last time Jack picked a fight with Miranda. I thought you were going to threaten to flay him alive with your mind."

"I wouldn't flay _Steve_!"

Shepard can't stop smiling: Almost her whole team is here (she appreciates Liara apparently having the same thought about not wanting to divide EDI's attention by taking her robot body). Her girlfriend led a second squad with two of her best friends to come rescue her. She almost has her hands on some data that her enemies desperately want. James made huevos rancheros for breakfast this morning even though no one was hung over. This planet has her favorite kind of weather. It might not be some giant, seemingly impossible victory like peace on Rannoch or saving the Citadel, but it's a wonderful day to be her.

"All I've got left to do is copy and wipe the data," she says, halting Tali in her tracks as she starts towards the terminal. "Cover me."

She turns around, and Ashley, Liara, Garrus, and Tali immediately shout, " _Cloak_." Her laughter as she does so is probably giving her away, but with an N7 candidate, the second human Spectre, Archangel, an Admiral, and the Shadow Broker at her back, she doesn't really care.

When she turns around again, there's only one Atlas on the field, the dig site is looking a lot emptier, her team has a landing zone a handful of Troopers and Guardians away from being clear on the ground, and Ashley, James, and Garrus are firing at the leftover, limping Atlas. Shepard picks up Ashley's Javelin and snipes the Guardians herself, right through their shields' mail slots. A Stasis Bubble and Chatika take out the Troopers, and soon enough Steve's back with the shuttle.

James turns on his comm and shouts, "Ram it!"

" _No,_ " she and Steve yell back instantly.

Earpieces weren't made for yelling. Most of them wince and cover their ears. Ashley and Garrus, however, glance at each other, and then Ashley hurls a Frag Grenade and Garrus follows it up with an Armor-Piercing Concussive Shot. Shepard politely pretends she doesn't notice them high-fiving as the Atlas explodes into flaming pieces.

The shuttle lands, and she announces, "Taking point!"

With that, she cloaks, blasting alternate gunfire and literal fire at the last Cerberus stragglers as she runs for the Kodiak's open door. She thumps the top of the shuttle twice - the signal for _it's me, just cloaked_ she'd adopted from Kasumi - before tumbling inside, and Steve takes off as soon as they're all onboard.

"'Ram it'," he says, shaking his head as they swerve past another shuttle. "Yeah, Vega, if you want to be picking mech shards out of the cracks in the windshield for a week."

"I cleaned it up after ramming that Cerberus shuttle, didn't I?" James says, pouting his way to the turret. "Hey, Vakarian, help me out with this."

They start hauling the turret into the shuttle's doorway, but Shepard lurches forward before one of them can get behind it.

"I feel like _Chatika_ shot more than I did this assignment," she says. "I've got this."

It's not true, and she knows it and James knows it: She'd shot her way into the dig site along with James and Ashley. But no one argues. The guys immediately back off and sit down as she grabs the controls and fires at the nearest Cerberus shuttle, aiming for where she knows the eezo core is. The explosion's small, but the shuttle starts dropping immediately.

The next shuttle's more prepared, with the Troopers inside already firing, and Shepard wastes precious ammo as Steve swerves to avoid it. By dumb luck a grenade manages to fall by Ashley's feet, and she immediately picks it up and hurls it back out of the shuttle. While Shepard reloads, Singularity blooms inside the Cerberus shuttle's personnel hold, and Shepard glances behind her to grin at Liara before aiming the turret again, but the biotics have worked well, throwing the soldiers around the shuttle and hurling a few of them out. Still, Shepard hates to leave a job half-done, so she takes the shuttle down too. The two shuttles aren't the only things falling out of the sky, either: What looks like pieces of the Cerberus gunships are plummeting around them.

"Joker? EDI?" Steve says over the comms. "What's your status?"

Shepard looks out the door, but looking for the _Normandy_ instead of oncoming shuttles. (There seem to be fewer now, anyway: Cerberus calling a retreat, probably.) She sees her the moment Joker replies.

" _Gunships down or retreating! Come on in when you're ready._ "

" _I'll have the hangar door open as soon as you're in range,_ " EDI adds.

Steve shuts the shuttle doors, and Shepard puts the turret away before joining Liara, who still hasn't sat down. There's still battle tension in the lines and curves of her body that's usually faded by this point of a ride back to the _Normandy_ , but then again, Liara doesn't usually have to mount rescues for her. That would probably also explain the frown on her face.

"You know what you just did, Liara?" says Shepard.

"Hm?"

Shepard presses against her. "You just saved yourself a scientist from a dig site overrun by hostile forces."

Liara cracks a smile. Shepard smiles back, warm and open.

Ashley snorts. "Like _you're_ a scientist."

Tali puts on her Admiral voice. "Computer science is a science."

Shepard and Liara ignore both of them. Instead, Liara replaces her smile with a thoughtful look, though she's also clearly trying not to laugh. "I suppose I did."

"But I need your help on something else now," Shepard says, staring her down with a fraction of the earnest, desperate faith she sometimes uses to talk people into joining the war effort. "I want to take down the Shadow Broker."

"In bed," James says helpfully. Garrus laughs once and then coughs, probably pretending he hadn't laughed.

As much as she loves her team, they are not going to ruin this moment. Liara grins and kisses her, an armored hand sliding into her hair, until the shuttle jolts upwards, making them stumble apart.

"Hey now, no canoodling in the back seat!" yells Steve. "This isn't your mom's skycar!"

Well, maybe they'll have to postpone the moment.

**Author's Note:**

> "What is it with you and rescuing scientists from dig sites that have been overrun by hostile forces? If you decide to help her take down the Shadow Broker, I’m going to be jealous. And somewhat concerned."


End file.
